


something borrowed, something red

by vois



Category: Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu | The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Denyuuden AU Week 2020, Implied Relationships, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24786946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vois/pseuds/vois
Summary: "It's not really patricide," Tiir argued. "It's more like patricide by proxy. But it's mariticide in its own right! So if you're guilty of anything it'd be mariticide by proxy, right?""You're really not making me feel any better," Ryner said. But he did.
Relationships: Ferris Eris & Ryner Lute, Ferris Eris/Kiefer Knolles, Kiefer Knolles & Ryner Lute, Ryner Lute/Tiir Rumibul
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	something borrowed, something red

Ryner wanted his mother to be buried in red.

It was the first time he and his father had ever disagreed. “Your mother killed herself,” he said, and that was the end of it. Or at least it should have been.

Since it was his father’s demand, there was nothing he could do about it. No one would follow the wishes of a son over the wishes of a father, especially when the father was an immortal. So there was nothing he could do about it except break in after the funeral and change the corpse’s clothing himself.

But his father was an immortal. The people whispered that he knew ten thousand spells, and that he could see and hear for ten thousand miles around. Ryner didn’t like to think about the last bit, but the first part was definitely believable. At the very least, he had grown up with several hundred of those spells. That would make it a lot trickier to break into the ancestral grave.

So he had to get help.

He knew a wandering immortal named Ferris… or at least, he thought she was probably immortal. Her older brother definitely was. Ryner had seen Lucile duelling his father a long time ago, back when he was reeling from his discovery of death. 

Lieral kept his wife and his son with him in a luxurious estate at the top of a mountain. It was a nice life, but in hindsight there was really nothing to do but read. So his father can’t have been that surprised when Ryner, who practically lived in his library, grew curious and tried to sneak down the mountain to see the world for himself.

Ryner had failed the first few times because the changing air made him dizzy. It was all he could do to make his way back up to his rooms and pretend like he’d been there the whole time. But eventually he got to the bottom of it. He must have been… well, there was never a need for Lieral to keep track of his age. It could have been anywhere from six to fourteen, probably.

What he saw was shocking. The filth, the sickness, the bodies in roadside ditches that wouldn’t wake no matter how he shook or called for them. Well, one of them woke - a starved little girl who told him that the world was so full of death, so overflowing with it, that all children like her could do was choke on it…

“...”

It wouldn’t be of any use to wonder where she was, now. Maybe she had already died by the time Lucile dropped in just a few days later. Ryner hadn’t liked him, even as he served their guest tea like a dutiful son should. But then their guest and his father had started fighting, and Lieral killed him. Ripped his heart right out of his ribs and crushed it, crushing Ryner’s trust and love with it… except then it had grown back, and Lucile stood up and left.

He understood now that Lucile was probably older than he looked, even back then, but all he could see was his father killing a child just like him, or like that little girl. So the next time Lucile dropped in, as if nothing ever happened, Ryner begged to go with him. “To see the world,” he’d said, except he’d already seen enough of it and both Lucile and his father saw right through him.

Even if that trip had been miserable all the way through, with his father insisting on it happening and then insisting on accompanying… at least he got to meet Ferris, then. They’d bonded over books of all things, even though her preferred stories were a bit, uh, tacky. So Ryner hadn’t been surprised when she ran away from the mountain of Eris a few years later. He’d just been surprised that Lucile let it happen.

He’d also been surprised that Ferris left Iris behind, but, well, he would have left his mother behind too. Maybe Iris had seemed happy where she was, or maybe Lucile was just scary the way that his father could be scary.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair of him to draw that equation. Ferris believed that Lucile could hurt her, and maybe he would, but Ryner knew his father would never touch him. There was no excuse for his cowardice.

In any case, they were friends, right? She’d probably help him, right?

-

“I’m not an immortal,” Ferris said.

Ryner blinked, then sighed and laid his head down on the table.

“Right,” he said. His voice was muffled by his arms, but more than that, it was muffled by a sudden headache and a thick feeling in his throat.

Why had Ryner assumed that so stupidly? Didn’t he learn anything the last time, and the time before that?

After all, he’d thought his mother was immortal, too.

“Aw, don’t cry,” Ferris said, and jabbed him with a dango skewer. “I’m not immortal but I’ll help you anyways…”

“You will?!”   


“...in exchange for thirty boxes of this dango, the flavor’s really great,” she finished. And then finished off another skewer. “I think it’s unique to the region or something? It’s so sad that they don’t worship your dad here, if they did you could probably just ask them for dango offerings. Then I’d really be set for life.”

For life. Right. He swallowed.

Ryner didn’t know if he was immortal. He had the magic - a ridiculous amount, really - but it wasn’t like he could check to be sure. And Ferris definitely wasn’t immortal. And they were going up against a god…

Could he really do that? Could he really ask her to put her life on the line over a woman she’d never even met?

“You’re making a face,” Ferris said, “Ryner, we’re good friends, so… I’ll renegotiate my terms.”

“Huh?”   


“Fifty boxes of this dango and I’ll do it.”

“The number went up?!”

“Of course,” Ferris said, and tossed her hair. “Aren’t you grateful for having me as your friend? Isn’t that right? Don’t you want to pay me even more out of adoration?”

“...sure,” he said. Because Ryner  _ was _ grateful for her existence, really, and she was using that tone of voice that said she’d decided what she was going to do and wouldn’t be deterred.

Even if it was helping him. Even if it was something as insignificant as helping him.

“Let’s meet here again next week. There are other people who would want to help you too, you know… I have someone in mind.”

Ferris was still using that voice. “Sure,” he repeated, and banged his head onto the table when she left.

-

“Kiefer?!”   


“Ryner?!”

“Oh, you two already know each other. Good, this will make things easier,” Ferris said, but she had a look on her face that said that either the dango was subpar or she wasn’t actually pleased about this. It was entirely possible that it was the dango, though. Maybe Ryner was just overthinking it.

“I, I, how much did you tell her?!”

“Well, it all starts with a kidnapped bride - ”

Kiefer put her hand over Ferris’s mouth so easily and thoughtlessly that Ryner was shocked. The blush that rose to Ferris’s face was even more shocking, but…

Kiefer didn’t even see it?!

“From what I know of Ferris’s storytelling skills, I think I have the gist of it,” Kiefer said. “A woman was murdered but her husband doesn’t want her to be buried in red… so you’re going to break in and redress the corpse yourself if no one will do it. Right?”

She had a look on her face that said she was proud of Ryner for coming so far and caring so much. She was probably thinking of the last time he had looked away from injustice, and cried when she confronted him… but the truth wasn’t anything that pretty.

Kiefer was a travelling scribe. That meant that, in a pinch, she also acted as a magistrate. The first time they’d met, she’d been in a small farming village, sentencing a man to death for a crime that Ryner couldn’t even remember. He just remembered how afterwards, he had thought she probably had more blood on her hands than anyone else in the world, and yet she had managed to be an infinitely better person than him. But that was before he’d realized the truth about a lot of people, his father included.

“Sorry,” he said, and looked away. “It’s not… I’m not impartial or anything. Because. The grave we’re breaking into, it belongs to my mom.”

Kiefer just nodded. “I figured it was a relative,” she explained. “Otherwise you’d just hire Ferris to do it instead of wanting to redress the corpse yourself, right?”

If she knew he was only invested because of a personal stake then why was she still making that proud face? Ryner could feel his own expression twisting.

“...sorry,” he repeated. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Don’t be,” Kiefer replied. “And since it’s your family crypt, that’ll make getting past the protections easier, right?”

Yeah, but…

“How much do you know about the protections, exactly?” Ryner asked. Because Kiefer would be taking this a hell of a lot more seriously if she knew the whole story. “Because my father isn’t just some monk or eclectic, you know.”

“Ah? You mean he’s not just a nerd like you? How shocking,” Ferris cut in, but she did have a bit of a guilty look. Kiefer looked between the two of them, trying to puzzle out a story that no one would ever think to guess. 

“My dad’s a god,” Ryner said. It was well out of the realm of belief, he knew. Kiefer’s face flashed through a lot of different expressions before shuttering and going flat.

“In that case,” she said, and Ryner braced himself. Ferris must have been tense, too, because she kicked him under the table. “I’m sorry, but…”

“No, I understand,” he said, rushing to reassure her even as his mouth dried up. She was just a scribe, after all. And an occasional magistrate. Ferris wasn’t immortal, either, but at the very least she had been trained by one - even if that one had never taught her a single spell. Asking her to go up against someone like Ryner’s father was just too much, but before he could voice any of these thoughts, she cut him off.

“I know you probably wanted to keep this operation small and discreet,” Kiefer said. “But if we’re going up against a god, I know a man…”

-

To say she knew a man wasn’t accurate. At all.

The guy that Kiefer brought in was clearly a demon.

“So nice to meet you,” he said, and smiled sunnily as he shook Ryner’s hand. His eyes kept flickering between blue and black and red. Ryner couldn’t stop staring even after the guy closed his eyes, still beaming - they just left that strong of an impression.

“Ryner, this is Tiir,” Kiefer said. “Tiir, Ryner. Please don’t enter any blood pacts yet.”

“Yet?” Ryner asked. He was starting to feel a bit faint. The size of their happy little group of aspiring graverobbers had doubled in just a few days. He hadn’t planned on that, and he definitely hadn’t planned on roping a  _ demon _ in. They hadn’t even gotten past the planning stage of their little cryptbreak! What if this guy went over Lieral’s spells and said something like,  _ oh I can manage most of this except this last one, but don’t worry, I know a guy… _

“Don’t enter any blood pacts without my supervision, at least,” Kiefer corrected. “That’s how I know Tiir, by the way.”

“What, prosecuting him in hell?”

“The other way around, actually,” Tiir admitted, surprisingly sheepish for a guy that ate up human lives. “I, um…”

“He’s an idiot who keeps getting himself tangled in really unfavorable covenants,” Kiefer filled in. “I was investigating a plague, he was scapegoated for it by a necromancer, I’ll tell you the details later.”

That made it sound like this Tiir guy owed her. Which, in turn, made it sound like… “Kiefer,” Ryner said, dread filling his veins. “Kiefer, are you in a blood pact with this guy?”

“Don’t worry,” Tiir chirped, “It’s all talk. Just a… technicality?” He gave Kiefer a quizzical look, and she answered with an encouraging nod. Well, they weren’t the only ones who could communicate through looks alone! Ryner met Ferris’s eyes. The light was leaving them. She drew a finger over her throat, which could either mean ‘kill me’, or ‘I’ll kill you for indirectly causing this all to happen’. 

He really hoped it wasn’t the latter. Knowing her she’d claim they were married just so she could get the right to preside over his last rites and then totally fuck them up.

“Anyways, my thing with Kiefer isn’t serious,” Tiir continued, clapping his hands happily. Apparently he didn’t realize what that sounded like, and Kiefer definitely did, so that could only mean that she didn’t mind. Ferris ground her heel into his toes under the table, and Ryner wanted to cry. “So I’m totally open for something that is! Serious, I mean.”

...was he looking at Ryner? Oh, he was looking at Ryner. Oh, they were locking gazes. Okay.

Ryner coughed and looked away. “Yeah, well,” he started, except he was dealing with a demon here and didn’t want to risk losing his help in this. A demon  _ would _ be useful for this. Really,  _ really _ useful, actually. “I, uh, that can come after we get the whole corpse thing sorted?”

“Yeah, that can come after,” Ferris said, backing him up. Or so he thought, until she just kept speaking. “As long as you make sure that I don’t need to stage a second operation to dress  _ him  _ in red.”

Kiefer and her demon pal might be wondering which ‘him’ Ferris meant, but Ryner knew. Ryner  _ knew _ .

“ANYWAYS,” he said, and cleared the table to throw down all his sketches and notes. Someone whistled, impressed, and Ryner hoped it wasn’t Tiir. “Here’s everything I know about the family grave…”

They argued. Of course they did. They argued about who should sneak in to get rubbings of the stones, and who should spy on Lieral’s movements. They argued about what Tiir could pull off, what he  _ should _ pull off, and what he  _ definitely should not under any circumstances _ attempt to pull off. At one point, Ferris suggested just cutting through a stone door with her sword, which was absolutely ridiculous and definitely not possible even for her. (He hoped.) At the end of it all, they had the barest framework of a plan.

“At least Tiir can teleport us in and out, so we can probably meet here more easily in the future,” Kiefer said, and patted Tiir’s shoulder. He smiled, and even though he didn’t show any teeth, it still made a strange feeling run through Ryner’s body. “By the way, why did you want to meet here?”

“Oh, uh,” Ryner said, and coughed. “I mean, probably gods aren’t actually all-seeing or all-hearing, right? And all the legends say ten thousand, so…”

“Good guess,” Tiir breathed, leaning in far too close. Ryner fought his hands to keep them from clapping over the flush rising on his neck. “The ten thousand actually  _ is _ literal, and extends at most in two directions, like a teardrop or an eye. This will be well outside his viewing range.”

“Oh, uh, I’m glad,” Ryner said, and scooted over so that he was nearly on Ferris’s lap. “Really didn’t want him seeing any of this stuff.”

“What, so you weren’t even sure of it?” Ferris asked, rankled, at the same time that Kiefer asked “Wait, why is it  _ that _ important to keep it from him?”

Why was it that important? Well, Ryner could see why she would ask that. It wasn’t like he’d gone over the full story with any one of them, just that his father - who was known for loving a mortal so deeply that he went through heaven and hell to bring her up to his estate - insisted it was suicide and wanted her buried with all the honors and accolades of an actual immortal. From the outside, it probably looked like… like he couldn’t fathom one of his enemies actually getting past him to strike at her. Like it would break his heart to admit that he was that weak, and that he had done everything to shower her in comforts and luxuries only to get her killed, even if indirectly. It probably looked like he was being unreasonable and insensate in his grief.

Ryner could see why someone would think that. After all, he lived with the both of them for years and years. He knew better than anyone how much they loved each other, and how many mountains his father would move if only his mother would bat an eyelash at him. (The answer was countless.) 

If he didn’t know better, he’d also think that. But he did know better. He saw it himself, with his own eyes. And his father must have known he was there, because he hadn’t been ten thousand miles away. He hadn’t even been ten feet away.

It was hard to say out loud. He could feel his throat closing even as he rushed to get the words out.

“The reason this is a covert operation isn’t just because my father refused to bury her in the color I wanted,” Ryner said. “It’s not nearly so petty, even if… even if red is for murder victims.”

It was really quiet. Even Tiir was silent.

“My father was the one who killed my mother,” Ryner choked out. He could see it behind his eyelids, even when he slept. Especially when he slept. “I saw it myself. That’s all there is to it.”

Kiefer put her hand over his. 

If you buried a woman in red, she would resurrect and take vengeance upon her killer, but both of them would have to go to hell together. It was common knowledge, but Kiefer and Ryner knew it better than most. He’d helped her hold the rites for her sisters, a long time ago. They’d spent hours discussing which one of the sisters should be condemned, even though it should have been a clear choice, because… because Naia, who had been the most ruthless of them, who was the obvious pick, had been missing her head. 

Ryner wondered if Kiefer ever regretted it. If she was regretting it right now - the long chain of choices that led to her helping Ryner make the same mistake that she did. 

Or maybe she didn’t regret it at all, and this wasn’t a mistake, and if he closed his eyes he could go back to a time where his parents were happy…

“Oh, so it’s patricide, then,” Ferris said, and put her hand over Ryner’s, too. Like, actually over Ryner’s. She slid her hand below Kiefer’s to keep the two of them from touching. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Your dad’s dead.”

“Exactly,” she said, and grinned.

Tiir poked his fingers under Ferris’s hand. It was really cold. How had it ended up like this?

“Personally, matricide is what does it for me,” he confessed, like the subject of killing mothers wasn’t a sensitive topic at the moment or anything. Maybe he didn’t realize that it could be. “But killing gods is always fun, so…”

“We’re getting  _ my mom _ to kill my dad. You’re not doing it yourself, so don’t get any ideas.”

Tiir grumbled and rolled his eyes. But probably Ryner hadn’t actually offended him, because then he smiled at him.

Before he could stop himself, Ryner smiled back.

**Author's Note:**

> although it might not have been very apparent, this au is supposed to be based on xianxia and chinese mythology. burying women in red when they die under suspicious circumstances is still a thing that is done in hopes of getting justice on a possible killer, hehe.


End file.
